Stay Salty My Friends

Jesus tells His followers that… Salt is good for seasoning. But if it loses its flavor, how do you make it salty again? Flavorless salt is good neither for the soil nor for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand! What was He saying? Contextually this […]

Blessings In Disguise

I am reposting the story that follows with permission from Miles Coleman. Miles’ dad Fred was my first-ever vocal coach and is my friend. This story is one that is truly inexplicable. I don’t usually use the word “miracle” simply because of how it has been abused and misunderstood. But there is no other acceptable […]

ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: An Accidental Mirror

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. And in case you’ve been in a cave in Afghanistan (some have) for the past few weeks, the internet has been all abuzz with people challenging each other […]

The Fox News Channel Wasn’t Good for My Soul

Reposted with permission. Article written by my friend Tim Stevens. On November 7, 2012, I stopped watching the Fox News Channel (FNC). That might not seem like a big deal if you didn’t know that I probably averaged 7-10 hours a week for years. I was a news junkie. I LOVED watching the news, hearing […]

Family First

I have used this saying for years as an out-loud declaration of what I believe in my heart… and now my typical honesty. As you will readily see by the picture, physically getting family together is not always easy. I think the last all-together McQueary time was 2009. That’s not what “family first” is about (only). […]

The Stickers That Saved My Life

Before we begin, no, I don’t believe the stickers literally saved my life. And, no, I am not even talking about my physical life. However, none of that makes any part of my story any less true. Recently a new friend of mine learned that I had been a church planter and that our church closed. […]

Community: Subterranean Oasis

In my writing (and living, for that matter) I am often reminded that I take for granted the parts of my experience that I have forgotten. In other words, as I approach a given subject I am naturally inclined to view it from where I stand today. The problem with that is forgetting the steps […]

Community: The Deep End of the Pool

Often in conversations about following Jesus I hear Christians say things like, “I just want a deeper experience.” They are so right to want that. I believe that in most cases the “deeper” that people want is not the “deeper” that Jesus wants. What I have observed is that when people say “deeper” in the […]

Community: Natural Connections

This post is not about forming a small group Bible Study… though that did eventually happen. This is about making natural connections with people. This post is not about a bait and switch… i.e. forming friendships with people only so that you can proselytize them later (probably sooner). This post is about making natural connections […]

You Can’t Spell USA Without Jesus

Oh, wait… there’s no “a” in Jesus. Well there is in the Hebrew version… Yeshua. There you have it… USA! USA! USA! All joking aside, churches have often confused patriotism and pietism. They are not the same. Perhaps somewhat ironically, I am actually ok with both patriotism (to appropriate degrees) and pietism. Where I get […]

Scrapping My Plans

We were asked to write in my senior yearbook about what we thought we’d be doing years down the road. I don’t remember the assigned numeric value of said reach. Of course answers ranged from silly to sillier with a dash of serious. Without searching through dozens of boxes for the exact words, I can […]

An Eye for An Eye

Comedian Ron White hails from the great state of Texas. Part of his routine includes a bit about the death penalty… That’s right, if you come to Texas and kill somebody, we will kill you back. That’s our policy. That would be funny, except that it isn’t. Most of us do not need any convincing […]